Days 1 and 2: Canterbury to Dover

Let’s start with weather: in a word… English…

No. Let us start by counting our blessings. First, conveniently for those hikers who are built for comfort rather than speed, the walk from Canterbury to the coast is easily broken into two bite-sized pieces, about 17 kilometres to Shepherdswell, and a similar distance into Dover. And my prescient Walking Buddy had booked us into the only available accommodation in Shepherdswell.

Secondly, almost miraculously, we had barely taken two hesitant steps into our first day’s walk when we ran into four other walkers, two of them headed, like us, as far as they can get, in the time permitted on their visas!

So, for most of Day 1, we walked as a group of seven, including three doctors – very reassuring in case one slipped in the despondent slough and broke a leg or something! By the end of the first hour we had forgotten the rain and were chatting like old friends, finding common ground and even common friends in unexpected places.

The world is getting smaller, and perhaps the VF is no longer such a lonely walk as most of the books and blogs of yesteryears suggest.

From Canterbury, the VF is well sign-posted, if you can ignore the persistent indeterminacy of the road’s length. St.Augustine’s Abbey, just a few hundred meters from Canterbury Cathedral calculates the distance as 1800 kilometres.

A kilometre or so further along the road at St. Martin’s church, the distance has increased by a whole 100 kilometres!

Mileposts on the walk from Shepherdswell to Dover are also anarchic, showing ‘3 miles to Dover’ at three successive cross-roads a kilometre or two apart. An American day-walker overtaking us at the third 3-mile post, caught the dismay on my face and helpfully suggestd: ‘Three miles thrice? Oh, that just means not-long-to-go-now.’

Outside of the towns the path winds through farms and forests, sodden, squelchy and muddy, sometimes completely obscured, except for a distant fence that somehow manages to guide your steps to the next turn.

The weather made me think about difference between day walks and long distance hiking. Had I been planning for a little day ramble on Easter Monday, I would have consulted my weather app, stayed home and eaten the remaining Easter eggs.

It rained pretty much non-stop for the first three hours of our first day’s walk while gusty winds played havoc with ponchos and hats. But when you walk day after day, week after week, and indeed on the VF, month after month, you can’t really expect sunshine and clear skies and temperature regulated precisely to your walking preferences, every day. In the time it takes to walk 2000 kms, the seasons turn over, you move from the coast to the snowy mountains. Once the course is set, you walk whatever the season or the terrain. And if you have good company to distract you with lively conversation, that is what you remember rather than the muddy boots and dung-splattered pants.

Just for the record: the sun was shining on Day 2, making for a pleasant, mostly uneventful walk into Dover, made memorable by the company of fellow-travellers.